5 ms·
The world has become so strange. In my pirate youth, I would have never imagined the big companies to argue in courts like this, basically pro piracy. And the a
by lukan 8mo ago
The world has become so strange. In my pirate youth, I would have never imagined the big companies to argue in courts like this, basically pro piracy. And the activists are now against it, because the big guys are doing it.
- elric 8mo agoBig companies are stealing to enrich themselves, while small time pirates were pirating for their own entertainment. Some of the latter went to jail. While the former rake in the dough.
- DeathArrow 8mo agoI haven't changed. I was pro 20 years ago and I am pro now.
- Ekaros 8mo agoJust need to get around to understand that on many subjects big companies are not uniform block... They all have their own goals and ways of profit. Other than exploiting the consumers and state.
- dns_snek 8mo ago> And the activists are now against it, because the big guys are doing it. The activists are against it because the big guys are exploiting us small guys, again. Nobody would give a shit if Meta was just torrenting Nintendo's IP and OpenAI was torrenting Netflix IP, except the lawyers working for these companies.
- armchairhacker 8mo agoPeople would care if Meta is allowed to torrent from Nintendo and they aren’t, because they’d care if Meta bought licenses from Nintendo and open models couldn’t get those licenses.
- gzread 8mo agoOpen models would just torrent Nintendo IP and train on it anyway.
- willis936 8mo agoIt's not like there has been some change in principle and some sort of knife to sharpen. "2005 personal pirate" was about making art accessible. "2025 corpo pirate" is about killing art.
- GrinningFool 8mo ago2005 piracy had little to do to with making art accessible. For the most part it seemed more like getting for free the digital things we couldn't pay or and/or felt entitled to, with many justifications layered on top.
- gzread 8mo agothat's the same thing?
- cmiles74 8mo agoIt wedged distribution away from record companies. IMHO, that was a pretty big concern for them.
- kjkjadksj 8mo agoAnd in 2004 you had a tape deck with two bays meant for copying and none of your tapes or cds were real. You’d make copies from other people or even the radio or TV. People forget how piracy was actually the norm before the digital age attempted to crack down on it. Even just passing a book you enjoyed to a friend to read, can you even do that with ebook DRM?
- armchairhacker 8mo agoLLMs make pirated art more accessible, and 2005 pirates allegedly harmed artists by decreasing their sales. The significant change is that 2025 corpo pirates are big corporations, and 2005 personal pirates are individuals. And I think the larger issue is that the big corpo pirates get away with what 2025 personal pirates wouldn’t. Anyways, my opinion is that we should get rid of IP, but only with a replacement that ensures creators still get paid. I lean towards piracy being a small sin: immoral, but you can easily be a pirate and still overall moral person.
- Imustaskforhelp 8mo agoThe problem is that laws don't apply to these big companies but to the small guys. It isn't as if piracy has suddenly become legal for everybody. Oh no, its just legal for the big companies. The laws are different for everybody and that's what activists are worried about :)
- plutokras 8mo agoI have no issue with anyone pirating. In my country — and soon in Italy as well — all storage media sales include a small levy (Artisjus) intended to compensate copyright holders for losses from piracy. One could argue it's unfair if you're not actually using the media for copying, but having been forced to pay it regardless, I have no moral qualms about pirating content I don't feel like paying for. By the same token, AI companies are in no position to complain when their models are scraped and distilled.
- jagged-chisel 8mo agoHow does that money get distributed? If I create a film, how they decide if I’m worthy enough to receive some of that money?
- progval 8mo agoThe way it works in France is that money goes to a company that collects it on behalf of all copyright holders. Its website does not offer any documentation as to how copyright holders can claim their share.
- imglorp 8mo agoThat sounds pretty shady. There's also the problem that most media generated globally is not French. Do they pretend to distribute the spoils globally?
- gzread 8mo agoIn reality the system in these countries is pure corruption. The beneficiaries are large corporations who see it as an extra revenue stream and that's it.
- lukan 8mo agoNot completely. I know some french musicians who are great artists, but are not mainstream enough to sell enough records - and they do get state money to continue their art (progressive/psychedelic music, nothing tame).
- vjk800 8mo agoIf Meta wins this, does it mean that pirating becomes legal again?
- actionfromafar 8mo agoProbably only if you are giving "back to Humanity" or something like that? :-D
- bytehowl 8mo agoSo seeding will be legally enforced? Nice.
- actionfromafar 8mo agoNo you must prove that you have at a minimum 100 hundred billion stock valuation! :-D Or else it doesn't count.
- jacquesm 8mo agoNothing has changed: the money flows in the same direction as before, that's the constant. The courts are just a diode in a rectifier.
- j-bos 8mo agoThe activists seem to be so blinded by disdain they can't even consider the value of the precedent if it goes theough.
- archagon 8mo agoSomehow I doubt the precedent will apply to common folk. There will be some obscene carevout like “piracy fair use for corporations training frontier models” and we’ll be even worse off than we were before.
- gzread 8mo agoActivists are against AI training, not bittorrent
- swed420 8mo agoYou're probably both right since activists are not a consistent monolith.
- sumeno 8mo agoIt's almost like things can be good or bad in different contexts
- candlemas 8mo agoBack in 2015 Twitter bragged that Periscope had been widely used the night before to pirate a pay-per-view boxing match. I thought that was odd. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/05/sports/periscope-a-streaming-twitter-app-steals-the-show-on-boxings-big-night.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/05/sports/periscope-a-stream...
- crazygringo 8mo ago> And the activists are now against it, because the big guys are doing it. Different activists are different. "Information wants to be free" activists are against different things from "artists trying to make an honest living" activists. And different big guys are different. A big guy AI company wants different things from a big guy book publisher.
- jMyles 8mo ago> Different activists are different. "Information wants to be free" activists are against different things from "artists trying to make an honest living" activists. ...uhhh, I mean, maybe my perspective is skewed because I largely run in bluegrass/deadhead circles, but the venn diagram of these two seems to be nearly a circle. https://pickipedia.xyz/wiki/DRM-free https://pickipedia.xyz/wiki/DRM-free
- tototrains 8mo agoIt is not strange. Power serves power. Power lies without consequence. This is consistent.
- 999900000999 8mo agoBilly downloading a copy of Game of Thrones because he's too poor to afford one, is radically different than super billionaires who just don't want to pay for a license. Meta, Open AI and everyone else playing this game has enough money to pay the best lawyers on earth. They can act with impunity. I could even imagine them getting a law passed, a license to ignore copywrite law. Of course Billy don't qualify. It'll only be for the billionaires and maybe a handful of millionaires.
- Legend2440 8mo agoPolitics will make more sense once you realize that no one is really trying to have consistent principles. People (and corporations/politicians/neighborhood groups/unions/countries/whatever) are by and large for whatever they think will benefit them, and against what they think will hurt them.